I understand migraines can be quite debilitating and difficult to treat, so yeah it would probably be a dis-qualifier.

Last month I had what I guess was a sinus infection (not an allergy, I don’t have allergies) .Just my right nasal passage would begin to block up, the area under my eye would get sensitive, and then I;d get a pain behind and around my right eye. I could also feel a “needle” of pain thrust its way towards the back of skull in a direct line. My knees would get weak, I felt slightly off balance.
The episodes would occur midday, or mid-afternoon, or just as I was gong to bed usually twice a day and I couldn’t even determine any possible triggers,

I’ve ‘worked through’ all sorts pain before but my recent ‘sinus headaches’ were absolutely debilitating, and if that’s anything like a migraine and if there’s no fast acting remedy then the candidate would not be suitable.

I agree with your perspective, zxbe. A physically healthy president is essential to our national security. During a crisis, we can’t have a president who has to order everyone out the room and the lights turned off just to get a chance, not a guarantee, to think clearly.

Many people may not like the idea, but while the vast majority of us are constitutionally qualified to be president, very few are suitably qualified for that office.

Assume, for the sake of argument, a Bachman/Palin ticket. If Bachman got a migrane and Palin stepped in, would there really be a difference? I.e. if I supported both Bachman and Palin, they’d still get my vote.

I think it would be the same with a Kucinich/Bernie Sanders and/or Elizabeth Warren ticket. I could support a pairing of any of those, even if one was subject to the occasional migraine, because another competent individual would step in.

I think that if you have never suffered through a debilitating migraine then you might not know just how debilitating they can be… so people may not realize the seriousness of this condition. I get your point that someone might not be in the best frame of mind when that 3 o’clock am phone call comes in and may not be able to make the soundest of decisions.

My answer is going to be somewhat wishy washy… my answer is that it depends…. If it was our current President being shown to suffer migraines, I might say, no problem. If it were John McCain, I’d say no way….. but that is only because I have seen both of their temperaments on display in a wide variety of situations and over a long period of time.

Someone new to mix? If I didn’t know what their temperament might be, then I think I would have to agree with you and say no, I wouldn’t support him/her/it/bob.

I’d rather know up front that the migraines are going to be a factor than to find out that my representative is toe tapping in bathroom stalls or completely lacks a moral compass like the last administration.

This doesn’t excuse Batshit Shelly. It’s probably an attention stunt of some kind because I don’t think there’s enough functioning grey matter in her head to cause pain.

Fox making sure there’s a reason to stoke Islamic fear put up this stupid piece yesterday.

No one—terrorism expert or man-in-the-street—will be surprised if the attacks are linked to Islamist terrorists. There are plenty reasons to believe Norway might be a target. An Al Qaeda cell was unmasked there last year. And just a few days ago, Norway indicted a radical Iraqi cleric Mullah Krekar, (founder of Ansar al-Islam) for making death threats against Norwegian officials.

But speculation adds little value to the hard work of fighting terrorists. Nor is it usually necessary in the wake of these kinds of attacks.

One then wants to ask the author, why he spent an entire paragraph speculating?

You’d like to think so… but even on Fox’s main page, they have this text:

Authorities search for more victims in capital bombing and youth camp shooting rampage that killed at least 91 — carried out by a lone attacker identified as Anders Behring Breivik, reportedly with no ties to Islamic terrorism.

It’s presupposes that all terrorism is Islamic, and that this it is a surprise that it’s not.

We don’t know if al Qaeda was directly responsible for today’s events, but in all likelihood the attack was launched by part of the jihadist hydra. Prominent jihadists have already claimed online that the attack is payback for Norway’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan.

Shortly after news of the terrorist attacks in Norway broke, online jihadist forums considered credible began claiming responsibility. Those claims were a big part of the early media coverage. But now, the press is reporting that officials have arrested a Norwegian man named Anders Behring Breivik and the police are saying that he is a right-wing extremist, or merely a psychopath, and not a jihadist.

He then provides and brief graf from the Daily Mail, and then…..

The investigation will continue to unfold and we should learn more this weekend

That’s it?! 8 paragraphs on the scourge and scope of Islamic terrorism in the first instance, followed a few hours later by pretending he wasn’t part of the early “it’s the Islamics!” media coverage, and all he’s NOW got to say is….well fucking nothing of course, because of the FACTS.

Same old right wing bigotry, willful ignorance and calculated rhetorical hysterics and accusations, followed by sudden disinterest as soon as their bullshit is so obviously contradicted,

Well yeah, because the stupid liberal reality have shown them to be fools, so they just pretend they never said what they said in the first place and that what’s more important is OMG how are the Swedish Bikini team coping with the horror next door?

I was sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office (yes, again!) yesterday when CNN was carrying the Oslo story as breaking news. While I wasn’t waiting very long, I don’t remember them saying that any terrorist groups claimed credit. Actually, I think it was so early in the coverage that they didn’t know whether it was a bomb or a gas explosion or whatever.

My legs and feet are swelling hideously due to the heat. My feet no longer look like human feet – I told Wayne that I should have hooves instead of toes. (Of course, my feet in reality look more humanoid than human, due to the 2nd and 3rd toes on each foot being partially webbed.)

Jane, drink lots of cold water with lemon, and elevate your feet above your heart, if possible. Don’t stop drinking the lemon water close to bed time, it’s worth it to get up a few times in the night, if you’re getting rid of that swelling.

We had record rainfall overnight with more on the way and then the temperature is supposed to go way back up. I have officially reached oldfartdom as I was supposed to drive my daughter into the city to visit Roosevelt University and chickened out because the roads and viaducts are flooded and/or closed. I am in the doghouse, again.

It sounds like saudiFAUX “News” is having trouble breaking away from their claims that the most recent mass murderer is a “Islamist extremist” and has yet to shift gears to “isolated incident”. I’m also a bit surprised that they have not yet started, to the best of my knowledge, claiming the horrific event would not have happened if everybody carried a gun. But? We all now it’s comming.

Well yeah, because the stupid liberal reality have shown them to be fools, so they just pretend they never said what they said in the first place and that what’s more important is OMG how are the Swedish Bikini team coping with the horror next door?

I will be happy to console members of the Swedish Bikini Team to help them through this tragic time. 🙂

Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told reporters that the attacks, believed to be the work of a man who has posted on Christian fundamentalist websites, showed you can’t jump to conclusions about terror acts. He said most of the political violence that Norway has seen has come from the extreme right.

No one—terrorism expert or man-in-the-street—will be surprised if the attacks are linked to Islamist terrorists.

One statement is from someone who lives in Norway and knows what he’s talking about. The other statement is from a right-wing “think” tank in the US and demonstrates that the author doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.

Raving lunatic – just rambles on and on.
(always the imaginary conspiracies and perceived slights)

Such cases must be considered together with similar cases where the media consistently ignores issues related to Muslim riots. All remember the July riots in Marseilles and other French cities where the media were instructed not to report the news. One can only wonder how many riots have been in France or other countries that we havenever heard of.

Lovely interview series, CheeseFlap, and I feel as if I now know you if not better, then in a different light! You are a jewel and a treasure and it delights me every time I read one of your 17-syllable gems.

bdmm, it seems to be a WP problem. I got this little number when attempting to access My Account:

This webpage has a redirect loop
The webpage at http://wordpress.com/wp-admin/user/profile.php?page=grofiles-editor has resulted in too many redirects. Clearing your cookies for this site or allowing third-party cookies may fix the problem. If not, it is possibly a server configuration issue and not a problem with your computer.
Here are some suggestions:
Reload this web page later.
Learn more about this problem.
Error 310 (net::ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS): There were too many redirects.

I think the stalled deficit talks are beginning to take on a historical parallel to Shay’s Rebellion.
——————————————————-
While I would hate to see our streets filled with violence, chaos and anarchy, a rebellion like that led by Daniel Shay, is long over due! Of course it may happen in small pockets across the country but it will be mixed with right wing extremists and progressives, who will not agree on anything.

Our corporate overlords have the master plan. Keep the sheople fighting amongst one another. Distract us with entertainment and celebrity news. Keep showing how dysfunctional our government is. Hype up the anger of tea party members who are just pawns on the corporate overlords chess board.

But again I agree with your sentiment. It appears the only way we the people will ever get the change we truly want is by millions of us taking to the streets in massive acts of civil disobedience. But I won’t hold my breathe.

All of this talk of domestic terrorism concerns me. Granted the latest horrific attack happened in Norway, I still believe there are many in our own government, like my own congressman, Keith Ellison, who behind the scenes are working to revive HR-1955 “The Violent Radical Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, which died with the end of that particular session of congress.

I believe there are those in DC who are rightfully concerned with the rise of right wing, militant extremist groups. I believe many of them have our best interests at heart but there are others who push these types of legislation for a reason….Control.

No doubt we have a lot of crazy extremists out there who have no problem killing their fellow American. But I don’t want to see another vague, frightening and draconian law passed in the name of security.

Sometimes I hold my true feelings about some of these latest domestic terrorist attacks. In the case of the guy who flew his airplane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas. I understood his anger and displeasure with our government, I just didn’t support his methods.

This webpage has a redirect loop
The webpage at http://wordpress.com/wp-admin/user/profile.php?page=grofiles-editor has resulted in too many redirects. Clearing your cookies for this site or allowing third-party cookies may fix the problem. If not, it is possibly a server configuration issue and not a problem with your computer.
Here are some suggestions:
Reload this web page later.
Learn more about this problem.
Error 310 (net::ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS): There were too many redirects.

Not content to just, falsely, attribute the horror in Norway to “jihadists”; Jennifer Rubin seizes the opportunity to rail against “huge cuts in defense spending” that, to the best of my knowledge, she simply made up.

Cut the defense budget by 40%. Raise the retirement age from 62 to 67 over the next 20 years. No more trillion dollar military adventures, please. Control drug costs by getting rid of the Bush prescription drug bill, which was a windfall for Big Pharma. Close tax loopholes. Reward companies that manufacture here, and penalize out-sourcers. Roll back the Bush tax cuts for those making $250,000 or more. A family making $500,000 a year (before deductions) pays $175,000 in federal income tax. Without the Bush cuts, that figure goes up a paltry $11,500.

Roll back the Bush tax cuts, declare victory and pull out of however many wars are online at the moment (and stay out, no mas); cut defense to what it was in 2000 (not sure of the number, but somewhere close to a 2/3rd reduction). Remove the Social Security cap, and finally, universal health care (destroy the health insurance industry) and virtually all of our fiscal problems will gradually disappear.

Agreed on all points. The one place we may need to negotiate is my own pet dream of a tax increase for those who can afford it coupled with a substantial credit/deduction for those who actually hire people.

The really weird part is that generally, once a war starts winding down, we cut military spending. The U.S. military all but ceased to exist after WW1. Even before the end of WW2 we made huge cuts in acquiring existing technologies and transformed the military, especially the Air Force, into an R&D program. Funding was also slashed following the war in Korea.

Alas. We have not displayed as much sense following the end of Vietnam, the cold war, or “mission accomplished”. In fact; there’s an entire generation of American voters who think that ever-increasing military spending is the norm. They see it as desirable and necessary despite all the historical examples that contradict the belief.

I know I’ve noted this before, but it’s such a telling remark that whenever the topic of war (warmongering) pops up it seems to bear repeating. Charles E. Wilson, CEO of General Electric in the early forties wrote, in 1944 as he began to sense the approach of the end of WWII:

“The revulsion against war . . . will be an almost insuperable obstacle for us to overcome. For that reason, I am convinced that we must begin now to set the machinery in motion for a permanent wartime economy.”

They did indeed find the means, and it continues thru the present day. War is for profit, not for any honorable purpose. Money. Power.

And the right wing likes to blame old folks and poor folks and sick folks for sapping the budget, for causing the deficit. It’s not.

It’s the fucking war machine! When will common sense ever prevail? Never?

Somehow the storms missed me. There was thunder and lightning to the North and South of me but the sky overhead remained clear. Although, the distant thunder was enough to send my cat, who is a pathetic excuse for a predator, into hiding.

He claimed that “heat index” was invented by “libruls” in order to make people think it’s hotter than the actual temperature. I guess that he’s unfamiliar with the common refrain; “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity” that predates the use of the term “heat index” by decades if not centuries.

Many of my neighbors have willow trees which should have been cut down years ago. They are half dead and have chunks falling out of them. We cut ours down and they were filled with carpenter ants. I just hope when they fall it is on their houses and not ours.

I’ve verified that you don’t need to be logged into facebook to see it. It makes an attempt at humor to liken raising the debt ceiling to remedy our current economic crisis, to raising the blood-alcohol level to curb drunk driving.

Anyone see the humor in it? I don’t.

If you read the comments, it will show you how many stupid people there are in the world.

Zooey, this may change your Dad’s thought process about the Norwegian assassin…

It was revealed that the 32-year-old former member of the country’s conservative Progress Party – who had become ever more extreme in his hatred of Muslims, left wingers and the country’s political establishment – had ordered six tonnes of fertiliser in May to be used in the bombing. While police continued to interrogate Breivik, who was charged with the mass killings, evidence of his increasingly far right world view emerged from an article he had posted on several Scandinavian websites, including Nordisk – a site frequented by neo-Nazis, far right radicals and Islamophobes since 2009.

Unfortunately, it’s nigh impossible to get the truth on the air. Al Franken has been saying some great things but it takes hours of searching YouTube to find them. Schumer and Pelosi have both set it out in very simple terms but Schumer never even got mentioned and the networks cut away from Pelosi the second she announced she wouldn’t talk about Weiner’s wiener. Debbis Wasserman-Schultz made a truthful remark and got eviscerated by West and the Reichwing press/media.

A lot of people are saying what needs to be said but the “librul media” is either branding them as nutcases or ignoring them altogether.

For weeks, Republican presidential candidates have been a running a gauntlet of ever-more draconian pledges put forth by party purists. Grover Norquist’s anti-tax oath, the Susan B. Anthony List anti-abortion manifesto , the “Marriage Vow” and the “Cut, Cap and Balance” pledge are just some of the multiplying litmus tests now demanded by social and economic conservatives alike.

But as the 2012 primaries approach, another de facto requirement for GOP White House hopefuls is emerging. That is, candidates must not only (a) proclaim that they have been called on God to seek the presidency, but (b) declare that divine intervention is the cure for what ails America. Call it the Divine Right Pledge. And so far, it’s one most of the GOP field seems more than willing to take. […]

Makes one wonder why it was that doG apparently wanted Obama in the White House — I mean, a half-black Kenyan-born Muslim. Really?

Maybe doG gave up on white Christian Amurka is all I can come up with.😯

A pretty good examination of how the press/media ran with the “jihadist” angle on the horrific events in Norway. For the record; by the time I saw the reports claiming that it was a single person who committed these crimes I said to myself “they wouldn’t be trying to sell the Muslim angle if there wasn’t a good chance it’s a Reichwhiner”.

Jennifer Rubin really ticked me off so I will make no apologies for the length of this post.

As part of her screed against Islam and cuts in military spending; Jennifer Rubin made the claim that the U.S. Air Force is “smaller and older than when it was formed in 1947”. This is bull.

When the Air Force was established, in 1947, it was not “old”. The oldest equipment was the surplus left over from the end of WW2 in 1945 and the same year also saw three cutting edge milestones. 1947 saw the first flights of the first modern jet fighter and bomber and the breaking of the “sound barrier”.

One may argue about the relative importance of these events but they were very profound. The F-86 was the first production aircraft capable of breaking the speed of sound in a dive without breaking up. The X-1 proved that an airplane could break the speed of sound in level flight and also utilized a very advanced rocket engine that would eventually lead us to the moon.

The B-47 was the really big one though. A strategic bomber, that was as fast as the small fighters of the day, it broke new ground that made jet transports possible. It provided a blueprint for every jetliner in the world aside from the Concord and, for better or worse, made the world a whole lot smaller. Before the B-47 and it’s commercial descendents, most common people could not even dream of visiting another continent unless they were sent, in horrific conditions, as troops or refugees.

Thanks to the breakthroughs of 1947 we have made it possible for almost any member of the still vast middle class to travel to almost any point on the globe within a day or so. It also saw the first use of the technology that would take man into space.

Now, if one wants to talk about the age of military aircraft, it gets more complicated.

We do, indeed, have an aging fleet but that can be a bit deceiving. Our oldest planes are tankers/transports and B-52s. These kind of planes were designed to a very specific limit. They operate at very high subsonic speeds and it’s impractical to build them any faster so they remain useful until they fall apart or are destroyed in accidents. As long as they can be patched up and fitted with new engines and electronics there’s really no reason to replace them because the replacements would not actually offer significantly greater performance.

In the case of fighters we came up against a different limit. The limit of the human body. Planes like the F-15, F-16, and F-18 can perform maneuvers that can kill a person with g-force. We can build airframes that do more but the pilots are more difficult to improve. So, again, we find that replacing engines and upgrading electronics are more cost effective than building new airframes. There’s simply no reason to acquire new improvements on these kind of aircraft.

There is, of course, the relatively new “stealth” technologies. We’ve gone from the F-117, which was barely capable of a very limited role, through the B-2, which is more capable but too damned expensive to buy, to the F-22 and F-32, which are stealthy while roughly matching the performance of the F-15 and F-16.

For better or worse we have elected to go with a small fleet of very advanced, stealthy, combat aircraft that really don’t offer much more performance than the experimental aircraft of the late 1940s and 50s or the current workhorses that first flew in the 70s. That’s where we’ve put the R&D money and that’s what we are procuring. One can certainly argue the relative merits of that plan but to try and claim that our Air Force is too small and old is disingenuous at best.

The F-22 Raptor aircraft costs $300,000,000 each, and there are over 4,400 either built or on order. The plane costs $45,000 an hour to operate. The total cost of the project over 20 years is a trillion bucks. When’s the last time we engaged in an aerial war with dogfights? And aren’t aircraft carriers (literally) sitting ducks?

I especially liked the guy trying to “defend” Batscat Shelly. Apparently he hasn’t realized that the “attack” that’s getting the most coverage is the migraine story. A story that was broken by Tucker Carlson’s site, apparently, at the behest of Tim Pawlenty. The best thing that we “libruls” can do to derail Batscat’s campaign is just stick a mic in front of her and roll the tape.

Wouldn’t be much for Gila River Farms (that big Pima Reservation ag operation south of Tempe/Ahwatukee on both sides of I-10), but in Norway I’d think it’d seem a lot. What was it, has anyone noticed? Ammonium Nitrate, maybe? Great source of nitrogen and water soluble, but has the capacity to go poof bigtime. I think it was what McVeigh used, mixed with diesel fuel.

The suspect, tall and blond, owned an organic farming company called Breivik Geofarm, which a supply firm said he had used to buy fertilizer — possibly to make the Oslo bomb. Forensic experts scoured the facility for evidence on Saturday.

“These are goods that were delivered on May 4,” Oddny Estenstad, a spokeswoman at farm supply chain Felleskjoepet Agri, told Reuters. “It was 6 tonnes of fertilizer, which is a small, normal order for a standard agricultural producer.”

Thanks for the info…I wasn’t aware…but if that is the case, then any farmer is going be suspicious now, aren’t they? In addition to police…that seems particularly cruel hoax to coax people to trust you by the virtue of your uniform (fake though it was) and then opening fire on people.

You know, this stuff can be cut with upwards of 40% inert material like sawdust, and still retain its effectiveness as fertilizer. Yet it then becomes useless as an explosive — no amount of fuel oil will make it do anything other than smoke.

A long Saturday of meetings about the debt ceiling in Washington is over. Congressional leaders met with President Obama this morning at the White House, then they reconvened at Speaker Boehner’s office in the afternoon. After that, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid met in Pelosi’s office some more (Boehner had left.)
It’s not entirely clear yet if any deals were made, though Boehner reportedly hopes to have at least some plan in place by the time the Asian markets open Sunday night.
On her way out after her session with Reid, Pelosi told reporters there are no meetings scheduled for tomorrow.

Airlines are taking the profit from the FAA not collecting certain taxes, and not passing that savings on to the consumer.

Gee. Couldn’t see that coming.

Airlines are tossing consumers aside and grabbing the benefit of lower federal taxes on travel tickets.

Travelers walk through the terminal at Washington’s Ronald Reagan National Airport.
By Saturday night, nearly all the major U.S. airlines had raised fares to offset taxes that expired the night before.

That means instead of passing along the savings, the airlines are pocketing the money while customers pay the same amount as before.

It sounds to me as if the republicans want President Obama to use the 14th amendment to raise the debt ceiling, knowing full well that if President Obama does this they can then successfully paint him as a dictator or tyrant for their brain dead lemmings in 2012.

I don’t know what they want IP. I’m not sure they know. they’ve painted themselves into an ideological corner, playing to their very base base while risking the ire of their masters if we default. They can paint Obama as a dictator now, they’ve been doing it since he was elected. I think they’ll blink if the dems and our pres have the guts to stick.

I would normally be watching the Speed Channel F1 pre-race right now, but since Rupert Murdoch’s evil empire thinks US fans would rather watch it tape-delayed, I’ll watch on the BBC live and know who won at least two hours before Fox’s lame telecast starts. David Coulthard and Eddie Jordan are about as entertaining as Bob Varsha and David Hobbs anyway. BBC has an hour pre-race show, Speed a half hour, and Fox has almost none.

The question for the German GP today is weather. It’s cold and threatening rain. Twenty minutes before roll-off, it’s starting to drizzle.